CFMA: Talent Pipelining

Contractors will face continually worsening talent shortages through 2030.

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Those that want to continue sustainable growth must manage every aspect of their talent management processes with the same rigor they would manage a fast-track project with $100K per day in liquidated damages.

The Construction Talent War - Talent Pipelining.

On November 15th, Katie McConnell and David Brown kicked-off the first of a three-part series focused on talent.   

  1. Diagnosing the Biggest Talent Bottlenecks for CFMA Sacramento Members
  1. Fixing Your Biggest Talent Bottlenecks
  1. Building Benefit Packages and Perks Beyond Compensation for a Competitive Advantage 

A few interesting takeaways from the first session were:

  • When asked what their hiring challenges were, nearly 100% of the audience cited external market factors, which included the shortage of talent. To begin solving the problem, we must first start looking inwardly at the areas they can control and, more specifically, those that matter
  • Of the 83% of people who stated their challenge was not enough qualified talent, 50% of those also rated their Talent Pipelining process as effective (an ‘A’ or ‘B’). This is a little bit like stating your sales process is effective but not achieving the sales you want.  

The next step in solving a problem is to recognize that we may be looking at our internal processes and capabilities with more rose-colored glasses than we think. We actually may not even know what we don’t know. 




Rubber Ducks for Planning and Troubleshooting Effectively
"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." - Albert Einstein Wisdom that is as applicable to physics as it is to being a Foreman, Project Manager, or Owner of a construction company.
Time-on-Tools and Minimum Required Installation
Labor productivity IS NOT the biggest problem with field productivity. Under similar conditions the variation in how fast two crafts people actually “turn wrenches” is about 2X but there are far bigger problems to tackle. Focus on these three areas.
The Productivity-Talent Bonus
Contractors will receive a major talent bonus when they put a relentless focus on field productivity. They will become “Talent Magnets” for the best in the industry making them unstoppable even in the face of major talent shortages.